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CAPC Palliative Care Discussion Forum
Data Collection and Measurement

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Post Assessments and data collection process
Author: elke0519
Date: Feb 26, 2008 2:53 pm
In our outpatient palliative care program, nurse practitioners provide in-home services. Our assessment and measurement component includes: functional status, mood screen, symptoms, spirituality and social support. These assessments are given at enrollment and every 6 months thereafter. We are reassessing our measurement plan and the data collection process and would like to know what assessments comparable programs use and how they collect the data.
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+ Re:Assessments and data collection process (by janetbraun on 02/29/2008)
I'm writing from the PC Leadership Center of the Bluegrass. Our program does not do home visits. One of our emphases is with an out-patient clinic. We have used the Missoula Vitas tool during initial and subsequent visits to track progress across time. We've used this on a sampling of our clients and find that it provides an excellent visual way of demonstrating clinical progress.

The Edmonton Symptom Assessment tool is used in our hospital based PC program. All of the PCLCs used a modified version of this as a way to track, on a daily basis, patient's clinical progress. It serves multiple purposes, but for one it shows any clinician coming in to assess/evaluate a patient, what kind of progress is being/not made.

We've found that sampling a portion of your records helps to show improvement from initial visit to final visit and makes a great visual when making presentations.

At Brown University Center for Gerontology they've done some work and I would encourage you to follow their lead with an ARNP PC consult service in the long-term care arena.
Joan Teno, Theresa Rochon, Barzalai and Hall have written about their efforts.

I hope this helps. Janet Braun
+ Re:Assessments and data collection process (by lynceronsky on 02/29/2008)
The list of measures you describe would give quite a comprehensive picture of the patient's clinical status over time, and represent the domains of palliative care. Would it make sense to add presence of advance directives/proxy identification? Many programs are using the palliative performance scale as a measure of functional status appropriate to palliative care patients. Another view would be to think about the goals of your program and how you might measure progress. What you will use the data for guides decisions about what to collect and how often--one example would be if you are attempting to increase the number of admissions to hospice. Meaurement is primarily about learning--clear identification of what is behind your current reassessment will help.
Lyn Ceronsky Director, Palliative Care, Fairview, PCLC Faculty

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